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Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Corn Bread for the Bread Baker’s Apprentice

This week (and I am pretty sure I am behind?) I made Corn Bread. Was I eager to make this…no way. I even put it off over and over again. Once I finally got all of the ingredients together I could never remember to do the overnight cornmeal soak. Then, get this, when I did remember I didn’t have time the next day to make it. I placed the soaking cornmeal/buttermilk mixture in the fridge and kept hoping for a better day!

About the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Group: Nicole of Pinch my Salt sent out a twitter message saying “I need a challenge. Am thinking of baking my way through every single recipe in The Bread Baker's Apprentice. Anyone want to join me?” Well I jumped right in. Both feet, no thought at all. I think I was one of the first 5 that joined…did I even have the book? Nope but I ordered it that night!!!

We are now over 200 strong with members everywhere on the globe. It’s an incredibly enthusiastic group that wants to share like no group I have ever belonged to before. Awesome!

Our goal is to bake our way through Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread. An intimidating book at anytime but to think that you are going to be baking one of these recipes a week is slightly overwhelming to say the least. But I love a challenge and feel a real need to get out of my comfort zone. Oh yah, I bake all of our bread but I never seem to have the time or the desire to try something new and different. This will change all that!!!

Finally the eve of the day that I would be able to bake this bread came. I wanted to be fully prepared so I even cooked up the bacon ahead of time and crumbled it and placed it in the fridge.

The next day I pulled out the cornmeal soak and let it come to room temperature and then prepared the batter. I decided to cook this in my 10 cast iron skillet. I like the flavor and the ease that it lends to corn bread. The only thing I found was that it needed to be heated for a bit longer in the oven before the batter was added. I had also ran out of honey (have been using it for one of my girls who has a cough) so I decided to completely omit it and not even add any more sugar as I had read previous comments about it being overly sweet. I added one extra tablespoon of buttermilk to help make up for the missing liquid.

Will I be making these again? Not so sure about that. It was okay but my original corn bread recipe is really good. I found this to be really cake like in texture and flavor. Loved the amount of corn in it and the crunchy cornmeal but it was too sweet and the bacon was overpowering.

There are several ways for you to join in the fun! First of all, you need a copy of Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. Then just start baking! Even if you are starting late, just begin with the first recipe and start working your way through. There are several ways to communicate with the group as you begin your journey:

Flickr: We have set up a BBA Challenge Flickr Group where you can upload photos, see photos from other members, and even post questions and comments in the group forum. It’s a private group, so you will need to click on the link that says ‘join this group’ if you want to be able to post photos. As long as you are willing to bake bread all of the bread from the book, you are welcome to join the Flickr group!

Twitter: If you use twitter, you can follow what the group is doing by searching for #BBA or #bba using Twitter’s search box. You can join in on the conversation by adding the #bba or #BBA tag to the end of your tweets when you are talking about anything related to the BBA Challenge. For me, following what people are doing on twitter has been the most fun!

Facebook: If you’re on Facebook, you can join the BBA Challenge Group there and share photos, ask questions, and talk about your bread baking experiences with other BBA members on Facebook.

Even without the honey it was too sweet? That's too bad, it looks great. Myself, I like more crumbly than cakey cornbread, but I'm not going to turn my nose up to any of it. Especially with bacon. Heh.

I've been waiting for this and it looks wonderful! The bacon looks good, but I don't think I'd do the sweet to well, but that should be easy enough to correct to taste! I love it in the skillet! Thanks!

Your cornbread looks delicious. I think most people have their own go-to cornbread recipe but it's interesting to try a different one every once in a while. I really liked the texture of the PR version.

I love sweet corn bread so I loved this recipe. I like how everyone has a comparison recipe for this one that they have been baking. I thought the soaker really helped to make everything moist, so I might try that for my standard recipe.

I just made this cornbread recipe 2 days ago, and weirdly enough i think the bacon bits on top made it too salty. As for the the actual corn bread its delcious and the bacon fat makes a nice crunch bottom layer. But I think he suggests to leave the buttermilk soaker out at room temp so that the lactobacillus creates a more intense tart flavor. This more sour taste in the soaker provides great flavor. Try this next time instead of putting it in the fridge.